8 Thomas Jefferson Quotes on Governance

Thomas Jefferson quotes on governance

17. I hold it, that a little rebellion, now and then, is a good thing, and as necessary in the political world as storms in the physical.

20. Whenever the people are well informed, they can be trusted with their own government; that whenever things get so far wrong as to attract their notice, they may be relied on to set them to rights.

23. We are not to expect to be translated from despotism to liberty in a featherbed.

30. It was by the sober sense of our citizens that we were safely and steadily conducted from monarchy to republicanism, and it is by the same agency alone we can be kept from falling back.

    Attribution disputed; shown as originally published.

54. The care of human life and happiness, and not their destruction, is the first and only legitimate object of good government.

192. The principle of rotation... in the body of [bank] directors... breaks in upon the esprit de corps so apt to prevail in permanent bodies; it gives a chance for the public eye penetrating into the sanctuary of those proceedings and practices, which the avarice of the directors may introduce for their personal emolument, and which the resentments of excluded directors, or the honesty of those duly admitted, might betray to the public; and it gives an opportunity at the end of the year, or at other periods, of correcting a choice, which on trial, proves to have been unfortunate.

211. A society that will trade a little liberty for a little order will lose both, and deserve neither.

215. That government is best which governs least.

     Attribution disputed; shown as originally published.